First Time Authors: Don’t Price Based on Emotion

A mistake made by first-time authors is pricing their book based on what ‘they’ think it’s worth.

This is a natural thing to do. After all the author has taken months, often years to write the book.

This is a huge mistake.

This close emotional attachment first-time authors have with their book, can be detrimental to their overall success simply by pricing their book outside the competitive marketplace.

The price that you set should be comparable to other books in the same genre readers are paying for in the marketplace.

The price should be based on what ‘readers’ perceive is reasonable, not based on what the author sees as fair.

This isn’t something authors like to hear, but the a reality of the marketplace. The business of publishing.

It’s important to note that what works for one book won’t necessarily work for every book.

Don’t make this mistake. Do your research before deciding on a price.

The easiest way to do this is to spend some time on Amazon reviewing the books in the top 100 of your genre or topic.

You’ll start to see a trend in pricing which will give you a good idea of what the marketplace is paying for, and use that as your starting point.

This simple technique will help remove the guess work out of pricing your book.

Generally speaking, first time fiction authors without a known brand name do better on the lower pricing side of the market, until they’ve grown their catalogue to several books. Nonfiction authors have a little more room to move due to their books serving as a problem-solving tool.

When your author name and catalogue of books grows with awareness over time, then you can look at setting select books at a higher price.